Flood Risk Assessment in Herefordshire

A flood risk assessment in Herefordshire starts with two rivers that rise in Wales. The Wye and the Lugg gather rain from the hills of Powys and bring it into the county quickly, and their tributaries, from the Arrow and the Frome to the Dore, the Monnow and the Leadon, reach most of its farmland and market towns. We prepare flood risk assessments in Herefordshire for planning applications, house and land purchases, mortgages and insurance, together with sequential and exception tests and surface water drainage strategies, wherever the site sits in the county.

That takes in Leominster, Ross-on-Wye, Ledbury, Kington and Bromyard, the villages of the Golden Valley, Weobley, Pembridge, Kingsland, Eardisley, Fownhope and Mordiford, and the stretch of the Wye Valley National Landscape around Symonds Yat, across the HR postcode area from HR1 to HR9. Hereford and Hampton Bishop have pages of their own, linked further down.

Herefordshire Council's investigation of February 2020 found homes flooded inside from Cusop on the Welsh border to Symonds Yat, as the Wye ran at the highest peak flows ever recorded on it.

Send us the address and a sketch of what you plan: call 01293 214444 or email enquiries@unda.co.uk.

What Herefordshire's February 2020 flood investigation recorded

Storms Ciara, Dennis and Jorge followed months of rain, and the council's Section 19 report on the 2019 and 2020 floods puts the river flows at between a 1 in 30 and a 1 in 300 year event, depending on the river. The rainfall itself was only a 2 to 19 year event. The difference was the ground: it had been close to saturated since October. The report lists the places where main rivers flooded property inside.

The same report found smaller brooks and surface water behind a second set of floods: 36 properties at Wellington, 15 at Hope under Dinmore, 12 north of Staunton on Wye, 10 at Credenhill, 7 at Luston and 4 at Mordiford, among 28 places that met the council's threshold of three or more homes flooded inside. For a site in any of them, the history counts as evidence. A Flood Zone 1 label on the planning map does not make it go away.

Check a Herefordshire postcode against the flood data

The map outlines the whole Herefordshire Council area. Enter a postcode and it screens the address against Environment Agency data for river and surface water risk, the planning flood zones and live warnings. Our flood risk map covers the rest of England in the same way, from a Hereford street to a farm on the Shropshire border.

Treat a result here as a first look. The planning flood zones ignore defences, can leave out small brooks altogether, and say nothing about a sewer that has collapsed or a culvert that blocks. The Ross-on-Wye flood of May 2024, in the table below, started in a sewer.

The Wye, the Lugg and the brooks that feed them

Herefordshire Council's flood reporting page lists the Arrow, Dore, Frome, Leadon, Lugg, Teme and Wye, and the Pinsley and Worm Brooks, as main rivers, which the Environment Agency manages. Every other brook and ditch is an ordinary watercourse, and responsibility for it falls to the council as lead local flood authority, or to the River Lugg Internal Drainage Board inside its district.

• The Wye. Comes in from Wales at Hay, crosses the county through Hereford and Ross-on-Wye and leaves at Symonds Yat. On 17 February 2020 it reached 6.11 m at the Old Wye Bridge gauge in Hereford, 5.50 m at Mordiford and 5.07 m at Ross-on-Wye, the highest levels recorded at all three. Our River Wye page follows the whole river.
• The Lugg. Rises in Powys, runs past Leominster and meets the Wye below Mordiford, picking up the Arrow from Kington and Pembridge and the Frome from Bromyard on the way. Its record at Lugwardine is older: 3.00 m on 22 July 2007.
• The Arrow, the Frome and the Dore. Smaller rivers with their own records. The Arrow flooded Eardisland, Kington and Pembridge in January 1986, the Frome flooded Bromyard in July 2007 and again in November 2024, and the Dore runs down the Golden Valley to Pontrilas.
• The Leadon and the Teme. The county's eastern and northern edges drain away from the Wye. The Leadon flows past Bosbury and Ledbury towards the Severn, and the Teme crosses the north of the county at Leintwardine and Little Hereford.
• Brooks inside the towns. The Rudhall Brook at Ross-on-Wye, the Pinsley Brook and Kenwater at Leominster, and dozens of village brooks that never appear on a main river map. These caused most of the 28 local floods the council investigated in 2020.

River levels at every one of these gauges can be followed on our live river levels map, alongside the Environment Agency's warnings for each stretch of the Wye and the Lugg.

Leominster, Ross-on-Wye, Ledbury, Kington and Bromyard compared

Each market town floods in its own way. At Leominster and Ross-on-Wye, the council's latest investigations found the water came from sewers, drains and a ditch as much as from the river.

In 2021 the Environment Agency raised the 820 m Lugg embankment that protects 381 homes and businesses in Leominster's Marsh area (the Agency's announcement). The business park's 2024 floods got in another way: the council's report puts them down to surface water, the sewers and water backing up from the Lugg and the Arrow, not to water coming over the bank.

Herefordshire floods on record, 1960 to 2025

The council's 2019 Strategic Flood Risk Assessment lists notable flooding in Herefordshire back to 1931, and its Section 19 reports carry the list on to 2025. The run of dates is why the council asks applicants about past flooding as well as flood zones.

1. December 1960. The Wye, the Lugg and the Teme flooded Hereford, Hampton Bishop and Tenbury, and the Stank embankment at Hampton Bishop breached.
2. January 1986. The Arrow flooded 42 properties at Eardisland, Kington and Pembridge.
3. October 1998. About 70 properties flooded across Hereford, Bodenham, Bosbury, Eardisland, Pontrilas and Ewyas Harold, with surface water in Ledbury.
4. July 2007. The county's widest flood on record: 309 properties from main rivers, ordinary watercourses and surface water, and the Stank overtopped again when the Lugg and the Frome peaked together.
5. 2012 and 2014. Around 260 properties flooded in the summer and winter of 2012 and about 120 in spring 2014.
6. October 2019 and February 2020. Two floods close together, the second with record Wye levels and the losses set out above.
7. 2024. Floods on 2 and 3 January, a cloudburst over Ross-on-Wye in May, more in October and Storm Bert in November. The council published 18 Section 19 reports for 2024, from Leominster and Bromyard to Eardisland, Hoarwithy, Letton, Peterchurch and Ewyas Harold.
8. November 2025. The most recent report covers five homes on Prospect Walk in Hereford, flooded from the sewer on 11 and 12 November 2025.

Every report is on the council's Section 19 reports page, and a flood risk assessment in Herefordshire is expected to deal with any that touch the site or the road out of it.

What Herefordshire Council asks a flood risk assessment to show

Herefordshire Council is both the planning authority and the lead local flood authority, so one council reads the flood risk and the drainage. Applications are decided against the Core Strategy 2011 to 2031, adopted in October 2015, which remains the plan in force while a new Local Plan for 2025 to 2045 is prepared. The draft 2021 to 2041 plan was stopped after the national housing figures rose in December 2024.

Two of SD3's tests apply with particular force in Herefordshire. It lists rapid inundation behind a breached defence as a place to avoid, which matters at Hereford, Hampton Bishop and Leominster, where embankments and walls hold back the rivers. And it asks new development to reduce flood risk where flooding is already an issue, rather than only to avoid making it worse.

National policy sits behind all of this. Chapter 18 of the NPPF, on flood risk and coastal change, sets out when an assessment is needed (Policy F4) and the sequential and exception tests (F5 and F6), and F8 points to the 2025 National Standards for sustainable drainage. Our notes on the NPPF explain how those policies are applied.

Drainage in Herefordshire: the handbook, the ground and the drainage board

Herefordshire's own SuDS handbook sets out the rules a drainage scheme is checked against, and several go into more detail than the national standards. They decide whether a soakaway is allowed, how much storage the scheme needs and where the water may go.

• Soakaways need proof. Infiltration is considered first, but approval needs BRE Digest 365 testing and groundwater at least 1 m below the soakaway base. Our ground conditions map and BRE 365 infiltration rate calculator give a first read before a trial pit.
• Storage for 100 years. Drainage is sized for a 100-year design life with climate change, and an allowance for urban creep is added to the hard surfaces: 10% on housing at 25 homes a hectare or fewer, falling to 2% at 50 or more and nil for flats.
• Culverts are a last resort. Sending runoff into an old culverted land drain is not favoured, because blocked culverts have flooded property across the county. Where there is no alternative, the handbook expects surveys, cleansing or lining, and a plan to keep the culvert working.
• Welsh Water's adoption rule. A surface water sewer offered to Welsh Water for adoption must drain at least 51% property and no more than 49% highway.
• Package treatment plants and phosphate. Discharges from package treatment plants to watercourses are not possible in parts of the county unless secondary phosphate removal is fitted and maintained, and outfalls must follow the General Binding Rules.
• The drainage board's 9 metres. Inside the River Lugg Internal Drainage Board's 11,171 hectares, which take in Leominster, Pembridge, Eardisland, Bodenham and Hampton Bishop, its byelaws require consent for any building or fence within 9 m of a board watercourse and for any new discharge into one.
• Works on other brooks. Elsewhere, a new culvert, bridge or outfall on an ordinary watercourse needs the council's consent, and it will not be given after the event.

Ground conditions change across the county, from the sand and gravel the SFRA maps along the Lugg and the Arrow to slower ground elsewhere, so a drainage scheme should not assume a soakaway until one has been dug and tested. Our drainage calculators give an early estimate of runoff and storage.

Phosphate in the River Lugg catchment: a constraint to plan for

Since Natural England's advice of July 2019, new development in the River Lugg catchment has to show nutrient neutrality before the council can complete its habitats assessment and grant permission. The Lugg is part of the River Wye Special Area of Conservation, and the council's River Lugg planning page sets out what applicants must provide.

• The calculation. Applicants work out the scheme's phosphate budget with Natural England's River Lugg nutrient budget calculator.
• Credits from Luston. The council sells phosphate credits from its integrated wetland at Luston to free up development in the north of the county, for schemes that qualify.
• Mitigation for the rest. Schemes that cannot buy credits must provide their own mitigation, and the council points applicants to specialist advice and to Natural England's advisory service.

Phosphate is a separate question from flood risk, settled under the habitats rules. It does shape the drainage, though: where foul water goes, whether a package treatment plant can discharge, and how surface water is cleaned before it leaves the site. A drainage strategy in the Lugg catchment is written with that in mind. Our explainer on nutrient neutrality covers the wider rules, and our guide to the General Binding Rules covers septic tanks and treatment plants.

Herefordshire schemes that need a flood risk assessment, and some that may not

The answer depends on the flood zone, the size of the site and what is being built. Here are cases that come up often in the county.

Reports for Herefordshire sites, from Kington to Ross-on-Wye

What a site needs depends on what could flood it and who will read the result: a planning officer, the council's drainage team, a lender or an insurer. Unda is a CIWEM Business Partner, the consultants who write our Herefordshire reports are chartered, and none goes out until a senior consultant has signed it. For sites in the county we prepare:

• Every source together. A Herefordshire site can face a main river, a village brook and surface water at once, and our flood risk assessment weighs each one against the council's records.
• For the application. A flood risk assessment for planning answers Policy SD3 and the NPPF, from a Kington extension to a housing scheme on the edge of Ledbury.
• Before exchange. Searches flag homes along the Wye at Ross-on-Wye and Symonds Yat and along the Lugg and Arrow, and a flood risk survey for property purchase explains what the flag means for the house itself.
• Is this the right site? New homes in Flood Zone 2 or 3 need a sequential and exception test report showing why no lower-risk site in the search area will do, as SD3 requires.
• Drainage for the application. Our drainage strategy work sets out surface water and foul water for the council's drainage team, from outline stage to conditions.
• Holding runoff back. A surface water drainage strategy applies the handbook's BRE 365, urban creep and 100-year storage rules and shows where the water goes.
• After permission. Where a Herefordshire permission comes with a pre-commencement or pre-occupation drainage condition, we prepare the details for the discharge of drainage conditions.
• Insurance. Fifty Ross-on-Wye properties flooded inside from the Wye in February 2020 and 28 from a sewer in May 2024, and an insurance flood risk assessment gives an insurer evidence about the building rather than the postcode.
• Buying commercial property. Premises on Croft Business Park in Leominster flooded inside three times in 2024, and flood risk due diligence before purchase or lease sets out the history and the drains.
• Keeping a business running. For an occupier already on a site that floods, a business continuity flood risk assessment looks at access, stock and recovery after events like Leominster's in 2024.
• BREEAM. SD3 already asks non-residential schemes over 1,000 m² for BREEAM water credits, and a BREEAM flood risk assessment covers the flood and surface water credit on the same buildings.
• Foul water. With 44 treatment works across the county, a collapsed sewer behind the Ross-on-Wye flood and phosphate limits on treatment plant outfalls, a foul drainage strategy settles where the waste water goes.
• Groundwater. The handbook requires groundwater at least 1 m below any soakaway, and on the sand and gravel the SFRA maps around Kingsland, Eardisland, Bodenham and Leominster a groundwater flood risk assessment establishes how high it rises.
• Main river sites. After 2020 the Environment Agency began remodelling the Wye from Hay to Symonds Yat, and site flood modelling supplies levels where national mapping is too coarse for a brook or a defended reach.
• Getting people out. SD3 asks for a flood evacuation management plan where needed, and a flood warning and evacuation plan sets out warnings, routes and refuge for sites behind the defences at Hereford, Hampton Bishop and Leominster.
• Land for the new plan. The council is seeking land for around 30,000 homes for its 2025 to 2045 plan, and a flood risk feasibility study tests a site's flood and drainage limits before it is promoted.

Hereford, Hampton Bishop and the counties next to Herefordshire

Two places in the county have pages of their own, and three English counties border it. The Welsh side of the border is planned under Welsh policy, with Natural Resources Wales in place of the Environment Agency.

• Hereford. The city on the Wye, with its 2007 defences along the south bank and brooks such as the Yazor and the Widemarsh: see flood risk assessment in Hereford.
• Hampton Bishop. The village behind the Stank, where the Lugg meets the Wye: see flood risk assessment in Hampton Bishop.
• Worcestershire. East across the Malvern Hills and the Teme: our Worcestershire page.
• Gloucestershire. South-east, where the Leadon reaches the Severn and the Wye runs on below Symonds Yat: our Gloucestershire page.
• Shropshire. North, beyond the Teme: our Shropshire page.

All of our area pages are listed on the areas we cover page.

Herefordshire flood contacts, from the council to the drainage board

In a flood that threatens life, call 999. For a power cut, call 105. For everything else, the right number depends on where the water came from.

Community flood groups work in many Herefordshire villages, and the council lists them on its flooding pages alongside its natural flood management project with landowners upstream.

Questions we are asked about a flood risk assessment in Herefordshire

To talk through a Herefordshire site, call one of our experienced flood risk consultants on 01293 214444 or email enquiries@unda.co.uk.